The drought cut a swathe through our grain producing regions, slashing production to less than 10 million tonnes last year.

Obviously with an overwhelmingly proportion of our crop earmarked for export, any shortfall has significant flow-on effects in our major markets.

Little wonder then that there's relief this summer for our biggest single wheat customer Indonesia, which is closely monitoring the progress of this summer's bumper harvest, tipped to exceed 24 million tonnes. [FULL STORY]

Australia to face massive seafood shortfall: reportBROADCAST: 07/12/2003
Australia has more than 4000 fish species in its territorial waters, but according to the Australian Bureau of Rural Sciences, only four of the 70 most abundant species are considered under-fished.

The rest are either overfished, fully fished or classified as uncertain and the trend is likely to get worse, according to a new report which predicts Australia is facing a massive seafood shortfall by the year 2050.

Sean Murphy reports on some of the likely trends for commercial fishers and their customers in the next half century. [FULL STORY]